Russia Says It Has Deployed The Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile Three Times In Ukraine

The Kinzhal missiles are part of a series of new hypersonic weapons that President Vladimir Putin unveiled in 2018 in a wartime speech in which he said they could hit almost anywhere in the world and evade a US-made anti-missile shield. Shoigu, speaking on state television, said the missiles had proved effective in hitting high-value targets in all three cases, hailing them as unmatched and almost impossible to shoot down in flight. “We have deployed it three times during the special military operation,” Shoigu said in an interview broadcast on Rossiya 1. “And three times it showed brilliant characteristics.” Russia first used the Kinzhal system in Ukraine about a month after it sent tens of thousands of troops into its neighbor’s territory, striking a large weapons depot in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region. This week, the Russian Defense Ministry said three MiG-31E warplanes equipped with Kinzhal missiles were moved to the Kaliningrad region, an enclave of Russia’s Baltic coast that lies between NATO and European Union members Poland and Lithuania. On Russia’s Navy Day late last month, Putin announced that the navy would receive what he called “awesome” supersonic Zircon cruise missiles in the coming months. The missiles can travel at nine times the speed of sound, bypassing anti-aircraft defenses. (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Nick Macfie)